Multiple Stressors: A Challenge for the Future

This workshop proceedings aims to address the complex issue of multiple stressors (pollutants) in the environment. This is becoming a major issue now that virtually every region of the world is polluted. This is true even of 'pristine' arctic environments where there are no humans, because chemicals and radiation circulate globally, do not respect international boundaries and accumulate in animals, plants and soils everywhere. There are huge problems, both scientific and politico-legal in managing multiple pollution. These range from issues with identifying cause in the legal sense, when cause may be multifactorial, to issues with understanding the subtle interplay of pollutants at the biological level. The scope of the workshop was therefore very wide and multiple disciplines were represented, including economists, lawyers, and ethicists in addition to scientists. Among the scientists, there was a careful blend of those dealing with the practical problems on the ground, and the more theoretical people who want to understand the mechanisms of interactions between various pollutants especially when all are by themselves present at sub-toxic concentrations. The aim of the workshop was to try to identify the issues and to propose a way forward which could at least start to address the issues in a logical way.